Dumbledore's Wisdom

Last week I went down to Dublin to meet up with L, and hear her and top shot NY professor give papers at a Seminar at UCD. Having spent hours chatting with L in her hotel room, and not really sleeping very well due to the fact my room was a) above a nightclub b) incredibly hot and c) vibrated, I was utterly exhausted by the time it came to go back to Belfast. I fell asleep on the train, and even snored much to the amusement of the two kids sat opposite me (I could vaguely hear them giggling through my tired haze). I got back home, power napped for an hour, and then went out to Bop yestrum, v trendy evening full of gorgeous young things swanning about, which I normally wouldn't have bothered with, but it was a good friend of mine's leaving do: she is leaving Belfast to travel round India for a few months, and then is going to live in Brighton. She will be sadly missed. Anyway, it meant that on Sunday I was too shattered to do anything but indulge myself in re-reading my favourite Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I love it especially for Dumbledore's wisdom at the end, which I am going to quote to you now.

Harry has just defeated the evil Voldemort for the second time. Voldemort had haunted a diary and incarnated his 16 year old self in its pages. When he was 16, he was called Tom Riddle, and like Harry was a pupil at Hogwarts. Harry realises that he has a lot in common with Tom. Both are half-Muggle, half Wizard; both are orphans; both have dark hair and green eyes; both can speak Parseltongue, the language of Snakes. Harry fears that he is evil. Furthermore, the Sorting Hat wanted to place him in Slytherin, the House full of dark magic, and the one which Tom Riddle was in. Does the Sorting Hat know that Harry is really evil??

"So I should be in Slytherin," Harry said, looking desparately into Dumbledore's face. "The Sorting Hat could see Slytherin's power in me, and it..."
"Put you in Gryffindor," said Dumbledore calmly. "Listen to me, Harry. You happen to have many of the qualities Salazar Slytherin prized in his hand-picked students. His own very rare gift, Parseltongue...resourcefulness...determination...a certain disregard for the rules," he added, his moustache quivering again. "Yet the Sorting Hat placed you in Gryffindor. You know why that was. Think."
"It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go into Slytherin...."
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."